Intel's Falcon 8+ commercial drone takes off

Intel is entering the commercial drone market with this, the Falcon 8+

INTEL’S FALCON 8+ DRONE

The drone is the first from Intel aimed at business users, a market predicted to be worth tens of billions of dollars over the coming years. It’s roots are in the Falcon 8, a drone from Germany’s Ascend Technologies, which Intel acquired in January, and has been designed with the aerial photographing market in mind.

“This is a V-shaped Octocopter. It has 8 rotors. It’s designed so that when you have a payload, such as an SLR, none of the rotors are in the images.”

The drone can carry a number of different cameras and comes with a host of safety systems to keep it in the sky in the event of a problem.

“It’s a fully redundant electronic system. What I mean by that is, with the 8 rotors, you can have up to 2 rotors on each side stop and still fly the drone safely home.”

The autopilot has three sensing systems to make it more resistance to interference and even an dead battery won’t make it crash.

“we include the Intel Powerpack batteries. So there are two batteries in there and if one is drained out it understands which ones to use to make sure we have a safe flight.”

Also new is this controller, the Intel Cockpit. The last one was based on a model airplane controller, this one is way easier with a single joystick for the drone and a second joystick for the camera.

Intel hasn’t announced a launch date or price for the drone yet, but it’s part of the company’s push into the drone market. It’s been buying companies this year and has launched a drone development platform called Aero. The company has said it sees us on the cusp of a drone revolution.